In one of the forgotten corners of Nar Ghrum, far from the squares lit by burning dreams, opens an alley with no name, not shown on maps, not recognized by the guards. A narrow alley that cannot fit two bodies side by side, the buildings twisting around it as if made to choke it, and black water oozing from the cracks of the walls like regret leaking from memory.
Heavy steps touch the ground with stickiness, a torn leather shoe leaving bloody traces, and a head covered by a tattered hood that turns every moment, as if the shadows behind whisper unbearable things.
"Don't look, don't stop, don't listen."
He repeated to himself, the young sorcerer, who was no longer quite young.
His name was "Yaro," from a lineage of which no one remained. A former apprentice in the Temple of Light, and now... nothing. Neither his name is written, nor his image drawn.
Between breaths, the smell of roasted flesh crosses him, but it does not come from a restaurant. He knows. In Nar Ghrum, every delicious smell means a recent death.
The alley slides downward as if the earth itself absorbs him toward something deeper than hell. On its walls, faces painted in blood change when out of sight. And the sound of crying, continuous, comes not from a person but from the alley itself, as if the stone weeps for something unspeakable.
He stopped at a door unseen. He raised his hand, drew a sign in the air with his finger, the void burned and tore itself to reveal behind him a wooden door made of dried bones. He knocked three times. Silence. Knocked twice. Silence. Then whispered:
"I who ate his name... return to collect the price of silence."
The door breathed, then slowly opened, releasing purple smoke as if the place was breathing for the first time.
Then he entered.
Inside was not a room, but a space larger than reason. Slanted walls covered with broken mirrors, and an inverted ceiling reflecting the floor, as if inside was reversed. There, at the end of the room, sat a woman with eyes covered by cloth, surrounded by two dark genies who moved the air slowly.
"The Silent Guild," they call it, with no sign, no announcement. A place where nothing is sold, but everything can be taken.
The woman spoke without moving her lips:
"Did you bring the voice?"
Yaro took out a small bottle, compressed as if made of a nightmare. Inside was the cry of a forgotten child, stolen in an ancient ritual. He handed it to her.
"I want to know who survived the fire. Who escaped that tower."
Silence. The genies moved their black eyes toward him.
"The price is forgetting your mother's face. Forever."
He closed his eyes slowly, then shook his head. He did not say goodbye. He said nothing.
The woman moved a finger and sank the bottle into a basin of liquid glass, and images rose on the walls as if the alley itself bled the truth. He saw a boy sneaking, saw a hand opening a door that should not be opened. Saw impossible survival.
When he left, he no longer knew whose face it was. He knew someone survived, but no longer knew who.
---
In another alley, a small girl walked in a gray dress carried by the wind like a child's ghost. Her eyes did not blink. On her shoulder perched a featherless crow, beating with a heart of fire.
Her name was "Nilsa," half genie, half shadow. Young in age, but said to have lived through four ends of different worlds. She was on her way to the guild, but for another purpose. Don't ask, don't justify. She was sent to watch.
In the shadows, eyes followed her. From the ceilings, tongues dangled, searching for a word to tempt her. But she did not look back. She walked as if she knew the earth before it was built.
When she entered the guild, the door did not open for her. She did not need it. She passed through the wall. Because she carried something older than matter: an unseen seal, black light, a name without pronunciation.
Inside, the woman with covered eyes lifted her head, the genies disappeared.
Nilsa smiled for the first time in centuries, and said:
— "The past is dead. The time has come. Burn the voice."
Glass shattered, and the entire guild screamed as one being, while the alley behind her closed and erased itself from the city's memory.
Now, in the alley, only a faint sound remained, like the rustle of a turning page, an echo heard only by those who lost something unknown.
And the city, as always, did not notice. Because those who see... never return the same.
---
In the heart of the old Zoom district, where scents mingle between burning incense and the stale scent of dry blood, rises a tavern called "Snake's Fang." No one hangs a sign with its name, but everyone knows it and fears to speak it aloud by daylight.
Its slanted door, as if unwilling to stay upright, opens with an iron creak like a sigh of a living thing groaning behind the walls. Its walls are burnt wood soaked in shadow tar, and from its ceiling hangs an old noose rope no one dares touch, rumored to move sometimes without wind.
Inside, smoke fills the air, light green smoke seeping from beneath the floorboards, no one knows its source, but those who breathe it feel a weight as if they just lost a cherished memory.
The air is thick with whispers, no one speaks loudly. Stories here are told through glances, through marks on the skin, or scars whose meaning is known only to those who have lived a hundred years in the shadows.
In the tavern's right corner, a table where four black sorcerers sit, wearing cloaks of unknown leather, their faces covered by masks half dead, half laughing. Before them a bottle of Regret Wine, a drink extracted from the blood of the sorrowful and fermented under moons that only appear on cursed nights.
One of them flips a small necklace between his fingers, a necklace emitting a faint moan. Perhaps it holds a soul.
Opposite them, a dark genie named Narzakh, his breath forming moss on the wood, betting on the slavery of a human girl just brought from a distant continent.
Silence between them broken only by the clinking of glasses and the tapping of a copper ring on the table — a ritual of submission before the sale.
Behind the bar, the old Sacr, a genderless creature with no eyes, is said to have once been human before swallowing the Shadow Stone heart.
He mixes drinks with his claws, whispering to the cups so they don't poison the unworthy, pouring fermented blood into cups of petrified bones. No one asks about the ingredients.
The door opens again.
A man enters in a black cloak, leaning on a cane made of shining bone. His steps echo oddly, as if bouncing back from beneath the ground.
All eyes look without turning, because they know him.
"Zaher the Crow."
Killer of ancient families, the free hunter, and the one who buys names before they are spoken.
He searches for something, or someone.
Shadow contracts.
Perhaps a blood contract.
He approached the sorcerers' table, exchanged glances with them, then pulled from his pocket a human tongue wrapped in a paper sealed with black wax.
He placed the paper on the table.
The four exchanged looks, and one reached out his hand… then stopped.
From the upper floor, soft footsteps… then a faint sigh, causing the lamp flame to flicker.
"He has arrived."
A voice neither man nor woman's, the voice of a creature born only from curses.
A creature descended the stairs with half a mask face, and half a shining skull. His eyes burned the color of dead mercury, and his mouth had no lips.
The Guild Leader.
The organizer of the gray market, keeper of mysterious oaths, the sixth shadow master.
He looked at everyone; no one met his gaze.
He approached Zaher and pointed to the table behind the black curtain.
The deal began.
Everything that happened before was merely the prelude to a long night, in "Snake's Fang" tavern, where evil is poured into cups, secrets are written in blood, and where no one enters — except having sold a part of themselves… or prepared to sell it all.
Where darker eyes wait, neither sitting nor drinking, only watching. In corners blurred by ink and shadow, behind charred pillars that no longer cast shadows because they are the shadows, lie creatures whose faces are unknown and whose names are not given. Their eyes burn with a blue flash, unblinking, staring steadily from worlds deeper than darkness itself, as if penetrating the very skin of reality.
From behind the smoke emerged a female with protruding fangs and a living shawl—the shawl moved as if crawling on her shoulder, descending when she was angry and rising when she smiled. Her hair was like a rope of night, hanging like breathing snakes, and her eyes were two glazed, frozen ponds.
She approached the bar, whispering to the drunkard in a language unheard, and he nodded as if he had heard more than she said.
A bottle of madness water was poured for her—a drink not sipped but inhaled, and at the first breath, one sees what must not be seen.
She smiled… and a glass behind her shattered on its own.
She knows the one upstairs hears.
In the opposite corner, a gaunt-faced dwarf with a sword-like nose shuffled leathery sheets inscribed with talismans that changed every time he blinked.
He was gambling with a small wingless dragon wearing a meteorite leather coat, laughing with a voice like breaking bones.
Between them was a small box, opened to reveal a severed finger still moving, pointing westward, then stopping.
They laughed, whispered, then fell silent.
The deal was made, and the finger returned to the box.
Then… suddenly…
The door opened again.
But this time, no one entered.
Only air entered.
Cold air, not like ordinary wind, but as if a grave had exploded inside.
All sounds stopped.
The old drunkard stared into nothingness, and for the first time in a century, he poured the drink incorrectly, a drop of blood falling to the floor.
In the corner, the shawled female gasped, her face turning gray.
The blue eye in the corner burned then vanished.
The nameless voice approached.
No one appeared at the threshold. Yet it was heard.
One step, as if treading on a nerve in the heart of the place.
Then another.
The walls rippled as if breathing.
The light went out… then returned a pale red, as if blood itself became the illumination.
From the middle of it all, a shadow appeared.
Not human, yet taking a human shape.
Its limbs longer than they should be, its face like a shattered shadow in a broken mirror.
Standing at the entrance of the tavern.
"Who sold his name?"
A voice behind the voice, as if hundreds of souls spoke from its mouth at once.
The back table's curtain was drawn aside, revealing the strange leader with half a skull.
He turned but did not answer, only bowed his head.
Everyone in the tavern did the same.
Even Zahir the Crow… gripped his coat collar and lowered his head.
The shadow passed. It did not walk, but slid, as if the tavern leaned toward it.
It stopped at the table, where the broken glass lay, where the spilled blood was.
It placed a finger on the ground… then wiped.
Then raised the finger to its mouth, as if tasting.
"Not him… but he is coming."
No one asked who "he" was.
No one dared.
Then, as it entered, it withdrew.
But it was not a withdrawal, rather as if the tavern regained its balance after an earthquake.
The old drunkard bent down and licked the blood dripping from the bar, as if trying to reclaim a part of himself.
Zahir stared at the black curtain, then whispered:
"We are not safe… anymore."
The leader nodded slowly, then raised his hand and wiped the black ring on his finger. And began to return to his place.
---
Where those who do not wait are waiting, the air in the tavern was heavier than the chest of a dying man.
In the dark corner, between two overturned barrels and a forgotten chair with broken legs, sat a man with half his face burned, one eye drinking fiercely while the other hand hid something within the folds of his cloak.
No one looked at him, or perhaps he seemed part of the wall.
But he looked. At everything. And at everyone.
At that moment, the back curtain of the tavern, a mere black rag hanging at the entrance of the inner alley, opened.
A man with colorless features entered, dragging behind him a shadow that did not touch the ground.
His footsteps made no sound, but he left behind a trail of steam as if his body was warmer than the place or colder than everything.
The barkeep glanced at him, just for a moment, then returned to wiping the glass no one intended to drink from.
The laughing faces withdrew.
The dice game in the opposite corner quieted.
Even the old witch who was singing a song in the language of the elves stopped mid-word, as if the last word was meant to lock something forbidden to speak.
The same man exited to the back alley after a minute, as if he had never entered.
The air was different outside the tavern.
The scent of blood not yet spilled.
Someone's shadow lay on the wall, sitting, as if waiting for a death meant only for him.
In front of him, on the ground, another man muttered, once a member of the Shadows Guild, or so said the tattoo on his neck.
He spoke in an inaudible voice, but whoever listened in this alley needed no ears.
Everything howled—the ground, the stones, the crumbling mud walls—repeating a groan coming from his throat.
His last breaths were not exhaled but drawn inward, dragged as if his soul refused to leave.
The colorless man stood over him, silent.
Then bent slowly, placing his hand on the dead man's chest.
Something left the corpse.
It was not light.
It was not darkness.
It was a pulse.
Then it vanished.
The corpse was now a true corpse.
---
The next day, the boy cleaning found the corpse.
It was not there.
But a tongue was carefully placed atop a stone slab, still moving.
As if muttering.
The child ran, screamed, vomited, then disappeared.
That same night, the dark passage beneath the tavern moved.
Someone sold information:
"The murdered knew the location of the market."
The doors were closed.
Silence grew.
Then a small hole opened in the wooden floor behind the third barrel.
They descended.
No one spoke on the way to the market.
No one lit a light.
Only the echo guided them.
Sounds came from ahead, though no one saw them.
Many candles, without flame.
Illuminated by blood.
The underground streets whispered.
Vendors did not smile.
Some sold breaths in bottles.
Another sold the cry of a forgotten child in a cave a century old.
People bought sounds that once belonged to suicides.
A woman with three eyes claimed to have a memory she never lived, searching for its true owner.
A man in the middle of the market, tall, bald, half his face glass, spoke not from his mouth but from beneath his feet.
He said time here was broken, and someone asked about a memory a thousand years old.
But he did not pay the price.
And the memory took revenge.
And awoke.
Some said the "shadow" killed the victim because he wanted to sell something forbidden.
Something not yet created.
---
A one-eyed man, the same sitting in the tavern corner, was following them.
But he did not speak.
He only drew on the table with an inverted dagger.
He drew a door.
Then a woman.
Then a sentence: "The seal is not what you think."
---
The night after the market, a wall cracked in an abandoned alley.
No one saw it crack.
But it was there.
And someone heard a voice whispering from behind it.
The voice said: "The blood key is lost, and the door will not close."